Industry estimates show that the BPO industry in Southeast Asia is expected to grow by 9% in 2022.
For people leaders in the BPO industry, a crucial strategy to boost EX for a growing workforce is to adopt a payroll software that can enable them to process payroll accurately.
The ability to disburse salaries and provide payroll-related data seamlessly is key to good EX. For companies, processing payroll without any errors makes employees trust their workplace, avail tax savings, get social security benefits, etc., thereby making them happier and more productive.
While payroll is not the only factor, it is one of the deciding factors for building a cohesive, engaging employee experience. Employees usually expect their salaries to be credited on time without any glitches and wish for more transparency, and this is not possible without an apt payroll application.
There is a dire need for a solution that can eliminate inaccuracies such as wrong credit dates, calculation errors, etc.
Here is where a solid payroll system comes into play.
How Payroll Management Software can enhance EX:
It is a known fact that payroll administration consumes a significant amount of HR teams’ time. This is sub-optimal since many of the tasks involved are repetitive and can be automated. Examples of mundane tasks that can be automated include pulling out data for employee requests that are self-explanatory, updating employee bank details, sending advance or loan requests with credit ratio, getting employee attendance and OT corrected, and so on.
Having a payroll management software will ensure that the time spent on these administrative activities decreases drastically and increases accuracy. Regarding cost – while investing in a payroll management system may seem cost-prohibitive, the savings in terms of person-hours can more than offset this cost.
Whether it is about increasing productivity or improving compliance, a payroll application can contribute positively to the business’s bottom line. For key stakeholders, this also helps make a strong business case. The caveat being a one-time investment will be required to organize employee data points.
Here are nine reasons how a payroll system could benefit your business –
Error-free calculations
Multiple studies have shown that job satisfaction and compensation are positively correlated.
A comprehensive compensation and benefits package is pivotal in retaining employees and keeping them engaged. A payroll application such as PeopleStrong automates salary and statutory calculations, thus ensuring timely and accurate salary payments with utmost transparency.
Centralized hub for documents
Once you have a payroll system in place, you can upload all employee-facing payroll documents to a single hub. This can then be accessed by employees from any location at their convenience thus reducing the dependency on the HR team and allowing them to focus on other strategic tasks.
Access to payroll history
A prime example of a redundant task that payroll specialists could easily automate would be catering to employees that might need their previous salary slips for various purposes. In the BPO industry, the size and scale of operations is massive. Thus, even a small task like procuring salary slips can consume several person-hours and cause delay and employee dissatisfaction.
A Payroll management solution that is integrated with a HR chatbot can eliminate this by letting employees view their salary slips on demand. Employees can also use the system to view other details that factor into their compensation such as overtime, night differential, statutory calculations including tax and other deductions.
Mobile-friendly interface
Modern Payroll systems these days offer mobile-first employee self-service, thus, giving employees greater control over the information they can input on the go as well as access, such as leaves, attendance, overtime, and night differential records.
A Payroll software that is also mobile-friendly can seamlessly work towards ensuring that attendance records are maintained in an error-free and hassle-free manner. Especially in BPOs, where rostering is done on a shift basis, this data helps clarify their schedule, leave, attendance, overtime, and night differential payments. It also reduces the need for manual reconciliation and does away with redundancies.
If defined leave policies are in place, a payroll software can ensure better compliance. Employees will also be aware of the status of their leave requests, pending leave balance and upcoming holidays without having to send their queries to their HR each time. From an employer’s point of view, this can also help ensure error-free record keeping and compliance.
Reduced response time
As a result of payroll management systems, the response time to employee queries is bound to go down since employees have access to standard data fields in real-time. Moreover, payroll systems such as PeopleStrong are equipped with chatbot integration functionalities. This means that the time taken to resolve most queries would be even shorter and ensures an almost zero turn-around time.
Case in point, Jinie, an AI-powered HR chatbot by PeopleStrong reduces employee queries by 40%.
Improved data security
Manual interventions are prone to data leakage and errors. There are data security and privacy concerns too that need to be taken into consideration. Apart from this, governments across the world are constantly tightening regulations for greater security and privacy, especially in Southeast Asia.
Thus, modern payroll systems are equipped with a host of security features like two-factor authentication, security questions, and OTP sign-in. This gives employees a lot more comfort in freeing themselves from the fear of the big brother looming over them if they stay up to date by ensuring compliance. The latest payroll softwares such as PeopleStrong also are GDPR compliant, thus guaranteeing enterprise-grade security for organizations.
Easier benefits administration
Typically, HR teams spend a lot of their time administering basic benefits such as social security deductions (employee and employer contributions), nominee and coverage details, payment history and other enrolments. The processes for administering these benefits are standardized and well-defined. A HR payroll and compliance software can help take care of this administration much more efficiently and effectively.
On the employee front, there are a lot of details that employees themselves desire to access. A payroll management solution handles that use case as well. Employees can pull out statements as they deem fit, view, and enroll in various benefit programs. They can also look at adding dependents and download policy documents for insurance coverage.
Enhanced data analytics
Since a payroll management system captures several data points; it will be able to give powerful insights into employee behavior through data analytics. For example, captured leave details can help identify peak and lean leave seasons for better workforce management.
For the BPO industry, this becomes particularly important when operations are done on a shift roster basis. Insights into preferred modes of deduction and expenses can be immensely helpful in making new policies or amending existing ones.
Self-Realization and Audit Trail
With an audit trail, payroll specialists can understand the mistakes made by the payroll team, correct them, and ensure they do not happen in the future.
At PeopleStrong, we have a pre & post-payroll maker-checker facility where users can immediately rectify their mistakes and learn from them. This process helps maintain 100% payroll accuracy thus saving costs, time, and making employees happier. This will also enable organizations to spend less time on doing payroll and more on focusing on their core business.
Conclusion
One of the biggest advantages of having a payroll management system is that it shows employees that the organization values the time of its people. It also underlines the importance given to accuracy and transparency.
While process improvements are also significant, they can only do so much. The overheads involved are also extremely high as every time there is a process change, the managers, employees, and all other stakeholders need to relearn the process. There is a significant cost associated with training and awareness of process changes as well. This can be done away with by going ahead with the one-time implementation of a Payroll management system.
With PeopleStrong Payroll, you can get 100% statutory in-country workflows, easy integration with in-place HR systems, enterprise grade security, employee self-service and more.
Trusted by the world’s best employers – now get accurate, compliant, and automated workflows – from punch to payroll and solve all payroll issues for a distributed workforce.
Click here to talk to an expert on how a Payroll Management System can solve EX problems at your organization.
